Fabric Cabinets

I'm always working on some sort of project in my house. I thought I'd document my progress/obsession for all to read about. Everyone is interested in what I do to my house, right?

My very first blog post ever should be about the project that drove me crazy and is loved by only me-my fabric cabinets. It all started with a trip to Fancy Tiger (owned by best-friend-from-jr. high Jaime Jennings-how about that?), where I bought the cutest fabric to make curtains for my kitchen. They were so beautiful, I thought painting the cabinets red would really make my kitchen awesome!

See? Isn't that fabric awesome? So I made the curtains and bought Rustoleum Cabinet Re-finisher. I bought it in a cherry-ish color because the other "red" color, Paprika, looked a little too orange. This product promises to make your cabinets look new and amazing without sanding-sign me up. However, it's not easy. First I watched the instructional DVD twice, then I went to work. I took off all the cabinets, all the hardware-my house was a disaster. Our house is slightly over 1000 square feet, I had the cabinet doors laid out all over the kitchen, dining and living room. I followed the time consuming steps: 1. Primer, wait 90 minutes 2. Color, wait 90 minutes 3. stain, wait 6 hours 4. finish, wait 12 hours 5. put your kitchen back together/get your life back in order. After all that work. The cabinets looked awful.

OK, the doors looked great-but they were made 3 years ago by my brother. The cabinet bases, which are original, looked terrible-every bad, goopey paint job from the last 50 years was highlighted by this new finish. There was no way I was going to paint these again (or sand anything, for that matter). Since I had recently seen all those great fabrics at Jaime's store, I wondered if I could fix it with fabric. I went in and consulted with them. I was directed to the laminate covered fabric. I bought a 1/2 yard to test it, when it worked, I went back and bought 3 more yards. Here are the results.

I used a spray adhesive and some carpet tacks to keep the fabric attached. I did have to take all the doors off and put them on again, but it was still easier than painting. Of course, the bird fabric that started it all really competed with the cabinet fabric so I moved those to the dining room, headed back to Fancy Tiger, got new fabric and made new curtains. Ahhh. I've had the fabric cabinets since March and I still love it. I'm not sure how we'll ever sell this house with fabric cabinets, maybe we'll just never move.